Non-Fiction

International Be Yourself Day

Alex

I’m not the most conventional person. Indeed we’re not the most conventional couple. If you’re a regular you’ll know that. However when not writing a blog about sex I do manage (most of the time) to maintain a thin veneer of normality. It is something of a prerequisite if I’m to hold down a job and function in daily life amongst the rest of humanity.

Funny how we make allowances for real life isn’t it. It’s so tempting to just ignore convention and politeness and speak your mind sometimes. Tempting, but not very common.

It’s like a children’s TV presenter swearing or, naming no names here, taking drugs. It’s not just out of character it seems so wrong as to jar against your instinctive sensibilities. Take today’s Big Brother’s Little Brother (yes another BB reference, sorry). It was presented by two comedians whose most famous gig was a show on BBC childrens channel CeeBeebies “Big Cook Little Cook”. As you can imagine, on that show there was no innuendo, smut or swearing. So to hear them using the F word, talking about sex and doing nob gags is both incongruous and and funny.

Strangely I had another similar experience at work today. One manager who I have worked with for about eight months swore during a conversation with me. Not to me, or about me, but he swore and it seemed odd. Odd because I’d never heard him swear before, had always avoided profanity and is rarely angry or stressed.

So I’m thinking here … why can’t we have an official “Be Yourself Day”?

We all get to talk bout things that are on our minds, frankly, openly and without fear of subsequent recrimination. We can use whatever language we want, dress how we want (cast off the work suite or the dumb-looking paper hat and badge with “Hi I’m Alex, pleased to serve you” on it).

We could talk about sex, swear at customers, better yet swear at managers hehehe (no they aren’t all deserving of a gob full, just a choice few).

We could all get our problems out in the open and dispel any misapprehensions others have about us. It wouldn’t all be negative, surely, perhaps you’d get compliments from people who you’d least expect to be complimentary.

Yeah, like we’re all going to take kindly to our faults pointed out by everyone around us and the next day forget all about it and not want to drop an Acme brand anvil on your detractor’s heads as they walk out their front door the next morning. In all seriousness I know it would lead to riots.

Hmmm, I started off thinking that it would be nice to talk about some issues openly, now I’m realising that I wouldn’t want to listen to some people’s fantasies.

Perhaps we should just all realise that each of us has a different face for different situations and a different image to project that we feel is appropriate to those we find ourselves amongst at the time.

So much for that bright idea.

Tags: Big brother,free speech,fantasies

5 thoughts on “International Be Yourself Day”

  1. The challenge for me has always been to be the same person in all situations….to not have a “work persona” and a “home persona.” It’s a long term goal, but it sure makes life simpler and helps me be more comfortable to be just who I am, warts and all.

    Ez

  2. A “Be Yourself” day is an interesting concept but could be VERY dangerous in the violent society we live in now and I am very doubtful it would stop after ther 24th hour. Just figure out anger between neighbours, family members, racial issues, religious intolerances… ok I’m stopping, you got the picture.

  3. I love the “be yourself” day idea. I’m thinking as i get older it might…just might…give me a darn good excuse to say whatever thee hell I want. The question is, how old is old enough to get away with stuff. I’m 56 now. That’s old enough to be a member of AARP. (old people insurance) And I can order off the seniors menu. Should I go for it? I mean, what else is old age good for?

  4. I find it difficult to deal with the work persona of others, the problem I have with that is because of the previous job I came from, where everyone wasn’t that much different to who they were (we’d all get pissed at the end of the month after sales presentations, have all night Christmas parties and the like until it all got restructured), so sometimes I think (even though a blog is a blog) that a blog is the last place where a person can be themselves, it offers that last frontier of freedom, and even then there are the few, or tiny group who need to be politically correct, but I ignore that. I’m glad there is no international standard on blog behavior or content.

  5. Anastasia wrote what I was going to write, but let me take it a step further. I think we bloggers impose a code of conduct on ourselves. We tend to be congenial and supportive in our comments. Partly I think that’s because we gravitate toward bloggers whose views are similar to ours (or who entertain us), but partly it’s because we don’t want to get uncomplimentary comments on ours. I know that, if I have a critical comment that I feel I cannot express in a calm and constructive manner, I just leave it unsaid.

    Alex, I know your observation was aimed more at stepping out of character than flaming others, but the line between those realms is indistinct, and what you or I might consider funny might be offensive to someone else.

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